Press Release

The Platner Collection of armchairs from Knoll, has been chosen by the architect, Joseph Dirand, for the new Girafe restaurant located in the heart of the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris.

For his first Paris restaurant projects, Joseph Dirand had already selected Knoll furniture. Starting from the Conference chairs designed by Eero Saarinen in 1954, which he used for the Monsieur Bleu restaurant in the Palais de Tokyo building, he then chose the Tulipe chairs and armchairs designed by Saarinen in 1958, for the Loulou restaurant in the enclosure of the Museum of Decorative Arts.

Today the Restaurant Girafe has opened its doors in the heart of the architecture and cultural heritage Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine – a living museum, an Art Deco monument, with an architecture and a panorama that is breath-taking – in Paris’s Trocadéro district. For Joseph Dirand, Girafe is a contemporary brasserie which inserts itself in a strongly-marked place, an architectural masterpiece. And therefore he has established a permanent dialogue between the memory of the monument and the idea of modernity, which he wished to bring to the restaurant.

With Girafe, this French architect wishes to recreate the spirit of the grands cafés of France in the thirties. A mix of elegance, intimacy, and the spectacular. To start with, the restaurant’s hall is seen by him as a precious treasure chest in which beige, light oak, cream, and smokey tints predominate, obtaining their power from the spaces and the original columns. It is in this space that Joseph Dirand has desired to add the Warren Platner armchairs, designed in 1966. Their decorative forms, soft and gracious, perfectly match the modern vocabulary of the restaurant. Their original structure in bundles of bent wire soldered onto horizontal frames in cold-extruded steel, meet the needs of such a place.

As seen by this architect’s choice, Knoll continues to reinforce its presence everywhere in the world. This is notably thanks to its launching of a new Contract & Hospitality catalogue whose main characters are the iconic products of this company, which personify the values and aspirations of the big groups and institutions who decide to use them in their spaces.

Knoll is the synonym of quality, elegance, and modernity. The history of this brand bears constant witness to this, without ever renouncing its origins nor its view to the future. A true icon in the design universe, Knoll pays maximum attention both to its products and to its clients.